Cosmopolis

There is a clever and respectable idea in "Cosmopolis." There are also some smart scenes, winning cameos and a young leading man at the center who inhabits with ease the film's strange tone of darkness and absurdity. But there's not really a movie there, nothing that sustains itself from scene to scene and nothing that's worth watching from beginning to end.

This latest from director David Cronenberg, based on the novel by Don DeLillo, is set in the near future and stars Robert Pattinson as a young billionaire who made his money by manipulating the markets. He has no real work or passion; he creates nothing, contributes nothing and is basically a bloodsucking blight on the face of the Earth. As played by Pattinson, the character himself seems to know this and is distorted by this knowledge. He is perpetually on the outside, looking at life through a limousine window, getting visited by various employees.

At the start of the film, financial speculation has resulted in a world in which there is just a small percentage of people who are wealthy or well off, and everyone else is dirt poor and angry about it. As the young billionaire drives slowly through the streets of Manhattan, on the way to getting a haircut, Occupy-like protesters of the future appear on the sidewalk - disorganized, frantic and flailing - spray-painting graffiti and throwing dead rats at people.

Most of the film consists of two-person conversations between the billionaire and the individuals who report to him. Juliette Binoche has a lively cameo, as the woman who makes his art purchases and has sex with him. Samantha Morton plays the billionaire's "chief of theory," who offers genuinely interesting ideas about the nature of time and progress. Patricia McKenzie, as the billionaire's security guard/lover, has an erotic encounter with the billionaire that gets his attention and the audience's, too.

But these are episodes, distinct in themselves, with no build or narrative drive, and after 45 minutes, a feeling sets in, which soon becomes a conviction, that "Cosmopolis" has said everything it has to say. For example, early in the movie, the billionaire meets his wife, a wealthy-looking blonde (Sarah Gadon) who won't have sex with him. They have a stilted, absurdist conversation over breakfast, and then meet for other meals that repeat all the same actions of the breakfast scene. The movie drives into a dead end and stands there for the next hour, facing a brick wall.

By the time Paul Giamatti shows up as a disgruntled would-be assassin, "Cosmopolis" has become a chore to sit through, and it gets even slower and more ponderous in its final half hour.